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Blogging, ethics and payola - what is OK?

2011-10-13T08:04:00Z

As beer blogging matures as a medium there are an increasing number of discussions on what constitutes ethical blogging. Is it OK to write about a brewery's beers if they've taken you on a tour or sent you free product? Or if you've done some kind of consultancy for them?

I'll come back to these in a minute - different bloggers have different points of view, and there are many shades of grey.

But I've recently been approached and asked to participate in one activity that, by any standards, is not OK at all. It's ethically wrong. In fact, it is probably illegal.

Two weeks ago, I received an email from a man called Barry Sonders who works for an agency called Translation, some kind of PR/communications agency based in New York. Barry's email read as follows:

Hey Pete,

I'm working with a beer brand that is looking to "seed" some stories

on blogs like yours about a new beer that is being released.

I was wondering what the cost would be for me if I wanted to seed

1 story a week for a month. Basically, what I mean by seeding is

that you'd blog or someone would write something saying... "I heard this

beer is X% alcohol content, etc"...

Let me know if this is something you'd be interested in doing and again,

if so, what is the price tag associated with that.

Thanks!

Barry

Now there was no way I was ever going to agree to this, and I immediately decided to write this blog post about it. But before I did so, I wanted to be better informed. Firstly, I wrote back to Barry to see if I could find out what brand was trying to persuade me to sacrifice my integrity in this fashion:

Hi Barry,

It kind of depends on the brand, to be honest. Are you able to reveal which beer or brewer?

Pete

Barry, seemingly, could not be drawn that easily:

To be honest, I can't right now. It's a major brand, definitely not in the craft beer arena

or of a mass audience, middle america appeal.

However, there was a link to Translation's website at the bottom of his email. I followed this link, and found a client list that included Coors among a list of reputable companies such as P&G and Johnson & Johnson.

So I contacted Kristy at MolsonCoors UK, who immediately replied that she was 'appalled' by this proposal, and contacted MillerCoors in the US (Coors is in a different JV over there) to see if this was something they knew about. She got this reply from Pete Marino at MillerCoors HQ:

This has nothing to do with MillerCoors or any of our brands. Translation does not do any work for MillerCoors, nor have they ever. They did at one time work for legacy Coors Brewing Company and they have the Coors logo on their website under the title “brands they have influenced…”. This doesn’t mean those brands are active clients and I can assure you we don’'t work with Translation. I am not sure who they are representing here, but... we don’t have any association with Barry or Translation and we do not condone this behavior.

Further down the email trail between Coors people, someone suggests the whole thing might be a hoax, as there are certainly no plans for a new US beer launch by MillerCoors at the moment.

I wanted to make all this very clear before moving on, because this is serious shit, and it's important to state that whichever brand it is, it's nothing to do with MolsonCoors or MillerCoors, who object to such practices on both legal and ethical grounds. (I only mention this in detail because if you Google Translation's website, you would think it was Coors).

Personally, whatever your views on free beer, hospitality etc (and I will come back to that) what's happening here is that I am being offered money to blog views and opinions about a beer as if they are my own, when they are not. By taking money it becomes advertising, and I am being asked to present it as though it is not advertising - clearly misleading my readers, and being dishonest in my writing.

I would never do that, for three reasons. One - integrity - I have some. Two - career practicality - if I did this, and someone found out that I'd done it, no one would ever trust anything I wrote ever again. My writing career would be over. And three - it is probably illegal. It certainly breaks any general journalistic and blogging standards of behaviour.

To get a clearer picture on this last point, I contacted both the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the Advertising Standards Authority.

The NUJ admitted that it's still early days for standards in blogging but the rules generally - and there's no reason why they shouldn't cover blogging - are very clear. Writing paid for by a brand should be clearly identifiable as advertising or an advertising feature so the reader understands that it's not under editorial control. The NUJ’s code makes it clear that payments, threats or other inducements should not affect what you write. Chris Frost, Chair of the NUJ Ethics Council, said:

“I’m shocked to hear that a company is trying to bribe a blogger who’s a member of the NUJ to write material that is not necessarily his honest opinion. Whether a journalist is a blogger or works in more traditional media, trust in what they write is central and the NUJ does all it can to protect that with our code of conduct.”

The ASA took a little longer to respond, but I got their reply yesterday. There's a new code, recently extended to cover online advertising. Here's what they had to say about it:

In short, yes, this practice would represent a breach of the CAP Code (marketing communications must make it clear that they are so)... we know that the Office of Fair Trading are also interested in looking into this area, as this type of practice represents a serious breach of consumer legislation.

This last point relates back to a test case last year in which the OFT investigated a company called Handpicked Media who were paying bloggers to write for them. The company was co-operative with the investigation, but it was judged that their activities may be operating in breach of the Consumer Protection From Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, and was engaging in unfair commercial practices. There will be more test cases to establish whether that 'may' actually is an 'is' or not.

But either way, whether this turns out to be technically legal or not, it's morally and ethically wrong. The whole point about blogging is that it is a subjective medium, that writers write from interest and passion. I do write paid for commercial stuff, but I write it in a very different style than I blog, and it's always very clear that I am doing so. I have never taken a penny from anyone for anything on this blog. If other people, who don't get as much paid writing as I do, choose to take money for paid-for ads on their blog that's fine - so long as it's very clear that this is advertising. But what Barry and his agency is suggesting undermines the whole principle and foundation of blogging.

So is this the same as accepting free booze or hospitality from brewers? There are different views on this, but I don't think it is the same at all. Fiona Beckett wrote an article for the Guardian recently about accepting payment for wine reviews, and much of the ensuing discussion was about free samples rather than payment.

I get sent free beer all the time, and it comes down to one's own personal ethics. I've got so much beer, I'm constantly trying to give it away before it goes stale. If someone sends me free beer and I like it, I'll say so. If I don't like it, I probably won't say anything unless the brewer is really insistent. But I certainly won't say I like a beer just because someone has sent me some for free.

Hilariously, earlier this year someone sent me a bottle of a very well-known beer brand, and seemed to think that, having done so, I would of course be including this brand in my Publican's Morning Advertiser rundown of my fifty favourite UK beers. Needless to say, it wasn't there and never will be.

It's trickier with trips/hospitality. If someone takes you on an all-expenses-paid trip around Belgium, it's kind of expected that you'll use the experience to write a piece. It doesn't mean you have to write aglowing report of every beer if you didn't really like it. But if someone shows you a good time, you're more likely to feel warm towards them - that's human nature. I'd like to think that a combination of full disclosure and personal integrity should mean you avoid saying things you don't really believe and misleading your readers.

As for consultancy - I do some of that. But I always tell brewers that while I'm working for them, I won't be writing about them, and I won't be promoting the work we've done together from a journalistic point of view. If I ever do write about it - like I did with the launch of Martson's Fast Cask - I will do so with full disclosure of my relationship, so readers can make up their own minds as to whether they can trust what I'm saying or not.

I know there are some bloggers who would see my standards as too lax, and others who would read this post and say, 'What's the fuss about? If you can get free stuff, take it'. I'm happy to agree to disagree with both, and am not really interested in attacking either.

But I would hope everyone, on every side, would see that taking payment in return for lying to your readers goes against everything that beer blogging is about.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been approached by Translation. If you have too, I hope you're not tempted - you just might end up being the next legal test case.

Bastards: a cautionary tale

2011-10-11T17:25:00Z

So, I got my laptop nicked.

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll already be weary of the trials, tribulations and swearing that followed.

I hadn't backed up - I have two separate external hard drives, but both had stopped working. I know I should have backed up online (or in the 'cloud' if we really must) but I never seemed to have time to sort out the best way of doing so.

I was in the Jolly Butchers last Wednesday. I was filming for a TV programme, and after that it was Emma Cole's leaving do. Emma has made the beery reputation of the Butchers, and now she's defecting to the Spotted Dog in Brighton. (Brighton, you are lucky to have her.)

At 6pm I put my laptop bag down beside Emma's chair. At 10.05pm I went back to it, and found the bag thrown under the table, with no laptop in it. I know the timings because I spent the following day watching CCTV footage from two angles, and saw myself do these things.

I also saw a photo shoot to celebrate the Butchers being named 'Beard-friendly pub of the year', and a giant panda emerge from the toilets and go outside. But even though the party table was in the middle of the screen from one of the security cameras, I did not see anyone go under the table, pick up a laptop, or put one in their bag. At no point is the table left empty - there are always at least three people - people who were part of our crowd - sitting down at it. You've got to admit, these bastards are good at what they do.

And I'm stupid. Really, really stupid.

Look at those timings again: I left a very expensive laptop with every single piece of writing I've ever done, all my music, my accounts, all my photos, alone for four hours in a public place. For half that time I was standing outside the pub.

I'm only writing this now as a cautionary tale, because I'm not the only person who is this stupid.

The Jolly Butchers is a lovely pub, one of my locals, and there's rarely a time when at least some friends aren't in it. I feel comfortable there, as comfortable as I do in my home - that's what great pubs are all about.

But without taking away from that, this comfort lulls you into a false sense of security. You extend your trust to cover everyone in the pub. You start behaving as if you are at home. I wasn't the only person to leave my bag unattended that night (I wasn't the only person whose bag was tossed). Every time I'm in this or other pubs, I see bags on backs of chairs with purses and valuables in them. I see phones left on tables when people go to the bar or toilet. I see jackets hanging with wallets in them.

And when I'm out of the pub, I see poster campaigns from the police like the one above, which is currently running all round London.

You never think it will be you - but eventually it is.

As the poster shows, thieves look for the easiest lift they can get. If you make it easy for them - if you INVITE them to take your stuff, as I did - it's hardly surprising if they accept the invitation.

So I'm writing this to everyone who goes in pubs, who loves them, and feels relaxed in them enough to chill out and forget you're in public: don't be the person who makes it easier for thieving bastards than everyone else does. Just keep your stuff with you, and out of sight. It sounds boring. It sounds nannyish. It makes you think of things you'd rather not think of while you're enjoying yourself. But it's absolutely necessary.

Oh yes, and do back up your computer. Religiously. Don't keep putting it off like I did, because shit WILL happen.

Right! Now to start my new book from scratch...

Enemy of the state

2011-09-26T14:58:42Z

How Luke Harding became the reporter Russia hated

There could be no doubt: someone had broken into my flat. Three months after arriving in Russia as the Guardian's new Moscow bureau chief, I returned home late from a dinner party. Everything appeared normal. Children's clothes lying in the corridor, books piled horizontally in the living room, the comforting debris of family life. And then I saw it. The window of my son's bedroom was wide open...

It wasn't open when I left five hours earlier, taking my children, Ruskin, six, and Tilly, nine, with me. We lived on the 10th floor of one of Moscow's post-communist-era apartment blocks, an ugly, orange-brick tower in the Moscow suburb of Voikovskaya. We kept our windows shut. The danger of a child falling out was too obvious.

To open the window, you had to twist the white plastic handle downwards 90 degrees. This was possible only from the inside; it couldn't have blown open. But the window was open, almost provocatively, defiantly so.

"Has there been a burglar?" my son asked, peering down at the frozen courtyard below. "I don't know. Perhaps someone managed to climb up the outside. Maybe it was Spiderman," I said weakly.

In the spare room I discovered a tape hissing in a music player. I hadn't put it on and my wife Phoebe had spent the night away with friends. Several hours later, while trying to suppress a feeling of horror, alarm, incredulity, bafflement and a kind of cold rational rage, I woke up. An unknown alarm clock had gone off somewhere in the flat. I went into the living room and turned on the lights. A clock was beeping loudly. I hadn't set it. But someone else had – to go off at 4.10am. I looked at the date; it was Sunday 29 April 2007.

It was clear that this was no orthodox burglary. They had apparently entered through the front door – the locks didn't seem to have troubled them. Nothing had been stolen; nothing damaged. The intruders' apparent aim had been merely to demonstrate that they had been there, and presumably to show that they could come back. The dark symbolism of the open window in the children's bedroom was not hard to decipher: take care, or your kids might just fall out. The men – I assume it was men – had vanished like ghosts.

I pretty much knew the identity of my ghosts – or the agency that had sent them. Fifteen days earlier, on 13 April 2007, the Russian oligarch and outspoken Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky had given an interview to my newspaper in which he called for the violent overthrow of Vladimir Putin's regime. Since then, Russia's successor agency to the KGB had taken a keen interest in me.

After the end of communism and the Soviet Union, the KGB had got a new name. It was now the Federal Security Bureau, or FSB. This was the main domestic state-security organisation. Its job was to carry out counter-espionage. Apparently that meant me. My name had been on the Guardian's front-page story, together with that of two London-based colleagues. Within hours of the Berezovsky scoop, my new strange life began.

Someone hacked into my private email account. A person claiming to be from the "president's office" called my office and demanded my mobile phone number. I didn't give it to them. A middle-aged woman, casually dressed and with – I noted – a rather bad 1970s-ish haircut, appeared outside my front door at 7am. When I opened it, she just examined me and left.

Two days after publication, I flew from Moscow to London on Aeroflot for a family funeral. I'd gone through the last security gate when someone slapped me, hard, on the shoulder. I turned round. There was a young man, wearing a leather jacket – the unmistakable uniform of the KGB spook. He was smirking. "There is something wrong with your jacket," he said in a strong Russian accent.

After takeoff, I made my way to the loo. I took off my jacket and shirt. There was nothing on them. But then, I wouldn't actually know what a bugging device looked like, I reflected.

In the pastiche neo-Soviet Russia that Putin had created since becoming president, the FSB had become the pre-eminent power in the land – a huge, secret, prodigiously resourced organisation that operated outside the framework of the law, according to its own set of (also secret) rules. The FSB felt empowered to crush anyone it considered enemies of the state. This meant Russia's tiny and demoralised band of opposition politicians. It meant human rights activists; workers for foreign NGOs; and businessmen who failed to observe the regime's new rules – obey the state and stay out of politics. It meant foreign diplomats, especially British ones. It also appeared to mean troublesome western journalists. Most dangerously, though, it meant traitors.

It was clear to me – and apparently to the British government as well – that there was an FSB dimension to the murder in London of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko. He had died in a London hospital in November 2006, three weeks after sipping a cup of green tea poisoned with radioactive polonium-210. Litvinenko was a former FSB officer. So was his alleged killer. The man who had apparently slipped him the cup was Andrei Lugovoi. But the identity of the person who had sent the killer remained a mystery. Was it, as Litvinenko's friends and family alleged, Putin? Or were other dark forces inside the Kremlin responsible, keen to provoke a crisis between Moscow and the west?

By the time of Litvinenko's murder, former KGB agents – a hardline group known as siloviki – had risen to key positions inside Putin's Kremlin. In 1999, Putin had become the head of the FSB. In 2000 he was elected as president and quickly elevated trusted members of the security services into the governerships of Russia's provinces, into ministries and into the directorships of state-owned companies. The KGB were back.

Sociologists estimated that in 2003 the number of senior Kremlin officials with a security/military background was 25%. By 2006 the figure for "affiliated" siloviki – including both official and unofficial agents – was an astonishing 77%. The siloviki viewed the demise of the Soviet Union as a humiliating disaster. Their mission – as they saw it – was to restore Russia's lost greatness. Breaking into people's flats, meanwhile, was an old KGB technique, designed to intimidate and harass, rather than to kill. If the person complained to the police, officers would merely politely respond with a suggestion of paranoia. After all, how do you complain about a break-in when the culprits are working for the state?

Three weeks after the Berezovsky interview, I received a phone call. It was the FSB. The story had caused a furore inside Russia, even pricking politicians from Russia's normally horizontal state duma to demand Berezovsky's extradition from Britain, something Britain's judicial system had consistently refused to do. In May 2007, the FSB launched its own criminal investigation into our story. Russia's chief prosecutor, Yuri Chaika, had already charged Berezovsky with fraud – accusing him of stealing £4.3m from Aeroflot – but it was clear that additional criminal charges would bolster the prosecutor's case and might just embarrass the British government. The FSB officer, who didn't identify himself, was polite but adamant: "You have to come and see us," he said. My own role in the Berezovsky story had been modest, I said. I had merely phoned the Kremlin's urbane, English-speaking spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, and asked if he had a reaction. It failed to deflect the FSB man. "I suggest you bring a lawyer," he said.

Three weeks after the phone call, I found myself with my lawyer, Gari Mirzoyan, a veteran of Moscow's criminal circuit, outside Lefortovo prison, a drab, three-storey building lined with spiralling razor wire close to the centre of Moscow. In communist times, Lefortovo was the KGB's most notorious jail, and not a place to which journalists were normally admitted, especially foreign ones. A large reinforced metal door swung open. Inside was a small reception area. The reception itself was hidden by a one-way silvered mirror: the officer on duty could see us; we could not see him. A disembodied hand appeared briefly; it took away my passport and phone. We were given permission to proceed upstairs. The lift had old-fashioned prison bars; it was, in effect, a moving cage. It appeared to descend to Lefortovo's K-shaped internal prison, where a small number of detainees, mostly political prisoners, were still kept. Old-fashioned video cameras recorded our movements from the stairwells; the corridor was lined with identical, anonymous wooden doors. We arrived at room 306 and knocked.

Major AV Kuzmin answered. To my surprise, he was a young man – 29 or 30, perhaps – wearing a dark olive-green FSB uniform. The fact that he was investigating the Berezovsky case – at the behest of the presidential administration – suggested he was already moving rapidly up the FSB's career ladder. On his desk was a colour photocopy of the Guardian's Berezovsky front page. He tossed it to me. "Could you confirm who you are?" he asked.

"Luke Daniel Harding," I said.

"How long have you been in Moscow?"

"Three months."

"Can you tell me the circumstances in which your interview with Berezovsky took place?"

"It took place in London."

"How do you know this?"

"The Guardian's legal department told me."

And so on. At first it seemed this wasn't really an interrogation but a piece of bureaucratic book-keeping. Later, I realised the aim wasn't to unravel the truth; it was to intimidate me. Kuzmin knew my answers in advance. By this point, the FSB had apparently broken into my flat, bugged my phone and hacked into my email; there wasn't much that would have surprised them. After 55 minutes, Kuzmin declared our interview over. I signed my witness statement. I wanted a drink, but had declined the fizzy water, fearing – unreasonably, I am sure – that it may have been tampered with.

The FSB's invisible presence continued; the agency became an intangible part of my Moscow life – sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly, with someone in a back room clearly turning the volume of minor persecution up and down. That someone listened to my phone calls was made clear most days. FSB agents cut the line whenever my conversation strayed into sensitive areas. Saying words such as "Berezovsky" or "Litvinenko" meant the immediate end of any call. (For a while, I substituted the word "banana" for Berezovsky. Amazingly, this appeared to work.) Discussions of Kremlin politics also ended badly, with the frustrating beep-beep of a disconnected line.

In early December 2007, I arranged a meeting with Olga Kryshtanovskaya, Russia's foremost expert on Kremlin elites and a researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the Academy of Sciences. Sitting in her living room, clad in a pair of her guest slippers, I asked about the FSB's methods. They maintained a listening station somewhere in Podmoskovi – Moscow's suburbs – she said. Its existence was a state secret. The FSB had its own special department for spying on foreign diplomats, she added; it probably had one for watching foreign journalists as well. The listeners were told whom they had to listen to. Wasn't this rather boring work? "The thing that keeps them going is the idea that they are serving their country and defeating its enemies," she said. Those who had worked in intelligence gathering – including Putin and Sergei Ivanov, Russia's hawkish former defence minister – tended to be brighter and more flexible. The most fanatical hardliners came from counter-intelligence, she suggested, characterising them as zombies. "These people were brought up in the Soviet Union. They were super-isolationist. They didn't know anything about the west. They were fed zombie propaganda and ended up as orthodox fanatics."

Membership of this most secret of clubs offered certain benefits – benefits that compensated for the relatively derisory level of pay. "If you work for the FSB, you don't have to worry about the law. You can kill someone and nothing will happen," Kryshtanovskaya said. I asked about the murder of Litvinenko. Senior officers in the FSB had privately admitted to her that his assassination must have been an FSB operation, she said. They had no regrets about the target – a traitor to Russia and someone who deserved to be murdered – but were unimpressed about the bungling and messy way his assassination had been carried out.

On her doorstep, I gave her back the guest slippers. She gave me a word of advice. "Take care," she said. Why? "Because you are an enemy of Putin," she replied, matter-of-factly.

By August 2008, we had left Voikovskaya and moved into a wooden dacha in the artists' colony of Sokol in north-west Moscow. The house was a haven amid the madness of the city: lily of the valley grew near our front gate, Virginia creeper decked the green picket fence. The cycle of harassment from the FSB had seemingly tailed off. And then, on 7 August, war erupted in Georgia. The flashpoint was the separatist enclave of South Ossetia, run in effect by Moscow and the FSB. Over the following three weeks, I reported what I witnessed as Russian columns swept down from South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali, towards Tbilisi. The Georgian army's disastrous incursion into Tskhinvali itself had been crushed; what was left of president Mikhail Saakashvili's forces was in disarray and retreat. In the Georgian border villages next to South Ossetia, South Ossetian irregulars went on a murderous rampage. Backed by the Russian army, they shot dead ethnic Georgian civilians (teenage boys first), looted cars and household furniture, and torched Georgian houses. It was 21st-century ethnic cleansing, and I said as much. These killings by Russian proxies went unreported inside Russia itself. Instead, state-controlled TV hailed Moscow's long-planned invasion of Georgia as a peacekeeping operation.

When I got back to Moscow, the mood towards western journalists was sour and vengeful. On 25 November 2008, I had an unhappy meeting with Boris Shardakov, the foreign ministry official responsible for British journalists' accreditation. "Why do you stay in this country?" he said. "Is your family not afraid that if you remain here something unpleasant might happen to you?" Was this a threat? It looked like one.

At the same time, the FSB resumed and escalated its campaign of brutishness. The break-ins at my home and flat became numerous. I kept a log.

29 October-2 November 2008. Upper outer right bedroom window open. Shut when we left. Batteries removed from alarm system in every room in the house.

8 December 2008. Central heating disconnected. House freezing. Mobile-like ringing from under the stairs in middle of the night. Can't find source. Ringing continues.

30 January 2009. Break-in at Guardian office. Screensaver showing Phoebe and kids deleted from my computer. Screen locked. Keyboard wiped clean. Door and lock stiff.

3 February 2009. Email to British Embassy returns with message deleted and "NULL" written on it.

By this point it was clear the security services were prepared to continue their campaign until I got the message and cleared off. The break-ins were not without humour. I once found a cheap paperback left by the side of my bed, offering tips on how to achieve better orgasms.

On 30 June 2010, the FSB broke into my office again. They unplugged the internet, opened the window and left the phone off the hook, placing it next to my laptop. The message was clear: we are still here. That day I had written a story about Anna Chapman, the spy who was part of a network of sleeper Russian agents uncovered in the US. The nocturnal visit was a reminder that I was again pursuing themes the Kremlin considers off-limits. Most news organisations in Russia – including, despite the efforts of its braver correspondents, the BBC – obey a series of informal rules, all of which I had broken. Taboo themes include corruption in the Kremlin, activities of Russia's intelligence agencies and human rights abuses by federal security forces and their local proxies in the troubled North Caucasus, and speculation about Putin's personal wealth, which some sources say is as much as $40bn. US diplomatic cables alleged "secret assets" abroad. Putin has denied this.

My Russian accreditation and visa expired on 27 November 2010; as in previous years, I had asked the foreign ministry for a renewal. The phone call, on Tuesday 2 November 2010, is unexpected. I'm in London, immersed in reading the secret WikiLeaks cables on Russia. The Russian foreign ministry summons me to an urgent meeting. They refuse to explain what it is about. I return to Russia and on Tuesday 16 November I turn up at the ministry's press department. I am told I broke permit rules during a Greenpeace press tour 13 months earlier to Russia's Arctic and during a visit to Ingushetia in March 2010. As a result, my accreditation will no longer be renewed. The FSB is behind the decision. I point out that other journalists from Reuters and AFP didn't have the right paperwork on both trips. I ask if president Medvedev – apparently keen to modernise Russia and attract foreign investors – is aware of my expulsion? There are no answers to these questions. But the calm demeanour of Oleg Churilov, head of the press department, during this exchange makes me think that the order to deport me has come from the very top. I warn him there will be a scandal. He appears not to care.

My four years in Russia end, then, in dramatic fashion: with a textbook Soviet-style expulsion. I am the first western staff correspondent to suffer this fate since the end of the cold war. I'm stunned. But my expulsion is not, I reflect, a surprise. It's something I have always accepted as a real, if far-fetched, possibility. Western correspondents in Moscow meet at least once a month in informal gatherings known as the "hack pack". Six months earlier, a young woman doing an internship at the ministry of foreign affairs turned up at hack pack drinks. Asked which journalist the ministry hated most, she unwittingly replied: "There's a guy called Luke Harding – they really hate him."

My family and I book tickets to leave Moscow on Wednesday 24 November. Twenty-four hours before our departure, my phone rings. It is Nikolai, the junior press department diplomat. "Mr Harding, I have good news for you," he says. "We are willing to give you a visa for six months, so your children can finish school."

It appears I am to be temporarily un-expelled, before being re-expelled later.

The reasons are unfathomable. This could be a pragmatic victory for the Kremlin's liberals. It's also possible that British diplomacy has done the trick. It's only later I reflect that the climbdown may always have been the plan. The FSB's decision has turned our life as a family upside down.

Phoebe, Tilly and Ruskin return to Russia in early January, so the children can resume school; I stay behind in Britain to finish a book about WikiLeaks. In the meantime, the Guardian publishes hundreds of stories based on the US state department's secret cables that see Russia depicted as a "mafia state". They are not happy reading for the Kremlin. My byline is on the stories.

On Saturday 5 February, British Midland flight 891 makes its approach to Moscow's Domodedovo international airport. I feel an unmistakable sinking in my stomach. On landing, I hand over my battered British passport. A federal border agency official taps in my details. She calls over her boss. They exchange glances, and then break into an embarrassed giggle. (I've observed this on previous occasions and wonder if something puerile, something mockingly unpleasant, is written on the agency's system next to my name – the bearer of this passport has a small cock?) I'm told to stand to one side. The supervisor takes my passport. After a few minutes another official, Nikolai, arrives.

Before I can ask what's going on, Nikolai launches into a brief speech: "In accordance with paragraph 27 of Russian federal law, you are refused entry to the Russian Federation," he says. Why, I ask. "For you, Russia is closed," he answers.

I text Phoebe: "I'm being deported." "NO," she texts back. I assure her that this isn't a joke.

Nikolai takes me through my own security control point, back to departures and gate number one. I realise I'm being sent back on the same British Midland flight I've just arrived on.

The FSB's decision to deport me causes a minor international scandal. After a career writing the news, I become the news. I am the subject of a debate in the House of Commons. I worry about my family stuck in Moscow.

It becomes apparent that the Russian foreign ministry is entirely clueless about my expulsion. Sources protest they know nothing of the FSB decision to put me on a blacklist. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, denies the prime minister has anything to do with it. Exactly who took the decision, then, is a mystery. It is, nevertheless, embarrassing for the authorities. Within four days of my deportation, the Russian foreign ministry performs an extraordinary U-turn and gets in touch to say I can have a visa. Exactly a week after I'm deported, I return. My accreditation expires on 31 May 2011, I read – so the decision to grant me a new visa is merely an interim face-saving measure. In three months, when the scandal is quietly forgotten, I have to leave Russia again.

Back at our Moscow dacha, and reunited after more than a month apart, my family vote is 3-1 in favour of getting out. Only Phoebe votes to stay put. She has spent four years writing about the other Russia. While I've been immersed in the grim world of Kremlin politics, Phoebe has been roaming around Moscow under an open sky.

Back in England, I immediately deadlock the front door. In cafes and restaurants I glance over my shoulder, on the lookout for young men wearing cheap, ill-fitting suits and brown shoes. Once, I hear Russian voices outside on the street and find myself following two men. But over time, it appears that the old world has gone for good. When I return to the house, the white patio doors – bolted when I left – are still bolted. Household objects remain where I left them. We are anonymous again. And – I think – safe.

• Luke Harding's book, Mafia State: How One Reporter Became An Enemy Of The Brutal New Russia, is published on 29 September by Guardian Books at £20; ebook and audiobook editions are also available. To order a copy for £13 (including UK mainland p&p), go to guardianbookshop.co.uk

Luke Harding

slight paranoia: The forces that led to the DigiNotar hack

2011-09-20T16:36:17Z

Last week, the New York Times finally covered the DigiNotar hacks, more than two weeks after security experts and the tech media first broke the story. Unfortunately, the top 2-3 newspapers in the US (which is what legislative staff, regulators and policy makers read) have missed most of the important details. The purpose of this blog post is to fill in those gaps, providing key context to understand this incident as part of the larger Internet trust (and surveillance) debate.

Lawful access

As consumers around the world have embraced cloud computing, large Internet firms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, all of them based in the United States, increasingly hold users' most private documents and other data. This has been a boon for law enforcement agencies, which can often obtain these files without a court issued search warrant, or have to provide the investigated individual with the kind of prompt notice that would otherwise occur had their home been searched.

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the US, EU, Canada, Brasil, India, Japan, Israel and several other countries all regularly obtain private user data from Google. The company will insist on a court order for some kinds of user data, but will disclose many other types of data and subscriber records without first insisting on an order issued by an independent judge. This isn't because Google is evil, but because privacy laws in these countries, the US included, are so weak.

Google does not treat all governments equally though. For example, the company will not honor requests from the governments of Iran, Libya, Zimbabwe, Vietnam and several other countries. You might be inclined to believe that Google has taken this position because of the poor human rights record in these countries - that is part of the reason (but not the whole one, otherwise, Google would refuse requests from the US government which has a documented track record of assassination, rendition/kidnapping and torture). Google's policy of refusing these requests, I believe, largely comes down to the fact that Google does not have an office or staff in those countries. Without a local presence, employees to threaten with arrest or equipment to seize, these governments lack leverage over Google.

This situation is not specific to Google - Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and other large US firms all disclose user data to governments that have leverage over them, and ignore requests from others. Thus, lacking any "legitimate" way to engage in what they believe is lawful surveillance of their citizens, these governments that lack leverage have turned to other methods. Specifically, network surveillance.

An unintended consequence of HTTPS by default

When users connect to Facebook, Twitter, or Hotmail—as well as many other popular websites—they are vulnerable to passive network surveillance and active attacks, such as account hijacking. These services are vulnerable because they do not use HTTPS encryption to protect all data as it is transmitted over the Internet.

Such attacks are trivially easy for hackers to perform against users of an open WiFi network using tools like Firesheep. They are also relatively easy for government agencies to perform on a larger scale, when they can compel the assistance of upstream ISPs.

As I described above, because Google will not respond to formal requests for user data from certain governments, it is likely that the state security agencies in these countries have come to depend on network interception, performed with the assistance of domestic ISPs.

Unfortunately for these governments, in January 2010, Google enabled HTTPS by default for Gmail and a few other services. Once the firm flipped the default setting, passive network surveillance became impossible. Thus, in January 2010, the governments of Iran and a few other countries lost their ability to watch the communications of domestic Google users.

For now, these governments can still spy on Facebook, Twitter and Hotmail, as these services do not use HTTPS by default. That is changing though. Following the release of Firesheep in October 2010, (as well as two senior US government officials calling for encryption by default) all three services now offer configuration options to force the use of HTTPS. These firms are all moving towards HTTPS by default - for some firms, it will likely be a matter of weeks until it happens, for others, months.

Governments can see the writing on the wall - HTTPS by default will become the norm. Passive network surveillance will lose its potency as a tool of government monitoring, and once that happens, the state intelligence agencies will "go dark", losing the ability to keep tabs on their citizen's use of foreign, mostly US-based Internet communications services.

HTTPS Certificate Authorities and surveillance

As these large providers switch to HTTPS by default, government agencies will no longer be able to rely on passive network interception. By switching to active interception attacks, these governments can, in many cases, easily neutralize the HTTPS encryption, thus restoring their ability to spy on their citizens. One active attack, known as a "man in the middle attack" requires that the government first obtain a HTTPS certificate issued by a Certificate Authority (CA) trusted by the major web browsers.

In March of 2010, Sid Stamm and I published a paper on what we called compelled certificate creation attacks, in which a government simply requires a domestic Certificate Authority issue it one or more certificates for surveillance purposes. When we released a draft of our paper, we also published a product brochure I had obtained in the fall of 2009 at the ISS surveillance conference, for a Packet Forensics interception device that described how it could be used to intercept communications using these kinds of certificates.

The browsers trust a lot of Certificate Authorities, probably too many. These include companies located in countries around the world. They also include Certificate Authorities that are operated by government agencies. For example, Microsoft trusts a couple dozen governments, that include Tunisia and Venezuela. It is perhaps worth noting that Microsoft continues to trust the Tunisian government even after it was caught in December 2010 actively hijacking the accounts of Facebook users -- an act that led to Facebook enabling HTTPS by default for all users in the country.)

In any case, as Sid an I described, governments can compel domestic Certificate Authorities to provide them with the certificates necessary to intercept their own citizens' communications. However, not all governments around the world are as lucky as Tunisia to be trusted by the browsers, nor do all of them have a domestic certificate authority that they can bully around. Some countries, like Iran, have no way to obtain a certificate that will let them spy on Google users (yes, I know that you can buy intermediate CA issuing powers, but I am assuming that no one will sell this to the Iranian gov).

In recent weeks, we have learned that the encrypted communications of 300,000 people in Iran were monitored by an entity using a certificate that DigiNotar issued. While the Iranian government has not admitted to conducting this man in the middle surveillance against its citizens, it seems reasonable to assume they were behind it. The reason for this certificate theft seems pretty clear, when you consider the other details described in this blog post:

Iran wants to spy on its citizens. It wants the same interception and spying capabilities that the US and other western governments have. Unfortunately for the Iranian government, it has no domestic CA, and Google doesn't have an office in Tehran. So, it used a certificate obtained by hacking into a CA already trusted by the browsers - a CA that had weak default passwords, and that covered up the attack for weeks after it learned about it, giving the Iranian government plenty of time to use the stolen certificate to spy on its citizens.

As Facebook, Twitter and other big sites embrace HTTPS by default, the temptation will grow for for governments without other ways to spy their citizens to hack into certificate authorities with weak security. Can you blame them?

NSA and other US government agencies have gambled with our security

In December 2009, after I had obtained Packet Forensics' product marketing materials, I met with a former senior US intelligence official. I told him that I believed that governments around the world were abusing this flaw to spy on their own citizens, as well as foreigners. When I told him I would be going public in a few months, motivated by my concerns about China and other governments spying on Americans, he said I would be aiding "terrorists in Peshawar" by helping to secure their communications. Needless to say, our meeting wasn't particularly productive.

US intelligence agencies have long known about the flaws associated with the current certificate authority web of trust. For example, in 1998, James Hayes, an air force captain working for the National Security Agency published an academic paper in which he described the ease with which certificates could be used to intercept traffic:

Certificate masquerading allows a masquerader to substitute an unsuspecting server’s valid certificate with the masquerader’s valid certificate. The masquerader could monitor Web traffic, picking up unsuspecting victims’ surfing habits, such as the various net shopping malls and stores a victim may visit. The masquerader could change messages at will without detection, or collect the necessary information and go shopping on his or her own time.

Of course, it isn't too surprising that NSA has known about these vulnerabilities. If the agency hadn't know about these risks, it would have been grossly incompetent.

The question to consider then, is what has and hasn't the NSA done with this knowledge. In addition to attacking the computers of foreign governments, NSA is supposed to protect US government electronic assets. In the 10 years since NSA first acknowledged it knew about the problems with certificate authorities, what steps has the agency taken to protect US government computers from these attacks? Likewise, what has it done to protect US businesses and individuals?

The answer, I believe, is "nothing". The reason for this, I suspect, is that NSA wanted to exploit the flaws itself and didn't want to do anything that would lead to the elimination of what is likely a valuable source of intelligence information -- even though this meant that the governments of China, Turkey, Israel, Tunisia and Venezuela would have access to this surveillance method too.

Perhaps this was a reasonable choice to make, when the intelligence agencies abusing the flaw could be trusted to do so discreetly (The first rule of State-run CA Club is...). The Iranians have upset that delicate understanding. They have acquired and used certificates in a manner that is anything but discreet, thus forcing the issue to the front page of newspapers around the world.

Now, any state actor or criminal enterprise with a budget to hire hackers can likely get its hands on fraudulent certificates sufficient to intercept users' communications, as Comodo and DigiNotar will not be the last certificate authorities with weak security to be hacked. Hundreds of millions of computers around the world remain vulnerable to this attack, and will likely stay this way, until the web browser vendors decide upon and deploy effective defenses.

Had the US defense and intelligence community acted 10 years ago to protect the Internet, instead of exploiting this flaw, we would not be in the dire situation that we are currently in, waiting for the next hacked certificate authority, or the next man in the middle attack.

Cybercriminals Have Their Eyes Set on Bitcoin | Malware Blog | Trend Micro

2011-09-16T12:51:12Z

It seems like Bitcoin is gaining popularity not only in the computing industry, but in the threat landscape as well.

'Fuck the police!' Working-class youth and the routine abuse of power | openDemocracy

2011-09-16T12:22:55Z

Plain Text Offenders

2011-09-01T01:41:01Z

Shared by ashok
"e-mail is generally not considered entirely secure" is mostly weasel-words.

'e-mail is almost entirely totally insecure' would be more accurate.

1and1.com

Web hosting company

On difficulty

2011-08-23T08:38:48Z

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

Leon Tolstoy - 1897

Google+ Gets a “+1″ for Browser Security

2011-08-23T10:57:22Z

Launching a new Web app today comes with a few certainties, and one of them is, “I will be a target for hackers” for sure. So when an app as large and as high profile as Google+ launches, it will surely be one of the top targets for malicious activity. This happened to Facebook the more popular it grew and it still is a favorite platform for malicious activity. I did some analysis of the HTTP traffic between Google+ and the browser and found that Google is off to a good start in regards to browser security. Below are several take-aways:

Only SSL!
All Google+ traffic is sent over SSL and non SSL is not even an option. This protects users’ traffic from getting sniffed and their sessions from being hijacked. It is good to know that Google understands that sensitive information is being shared and SSL is really the only option for transmitting data.

Secure Headers
Here is what a typical response looks like from Google+:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Length: 184942 Set-Cookie: ULS=somehash; Path=/; Secure; HttpOnly Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:29:05 GMT Expires: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:29:05 GMT Cache-Control: private, max-age=0 X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block Server: GSE
There are a few headers in this response that are specific to browser security, for example:

Set-Cookie Secure – This tells the browser to only send cookies over a secure (SSL) connection. So if the site happens to hit a page that is not SSL, then the cookie will not be sent.

Set-Cookie HttpOnly – This prevents the cookie from being accessed by client side script.

Both of these cookie attributes help to prevent session hijacking by only sending cookies when appropriate.

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff – This prevents “mime” based attacks. The header instructs the browser not to override the response content type. For example, some browsers try to be smart by deciding for themselves if the content is really is text/html or an image. So with the nosniff option, if the server says the content is text/html, then the browser needs to render it as text/html.

X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN – This tells the browser to only render frame pages from the URL hosting the main page. This prevents Clickjacking attacks against the user. Clickjacking is a browser-based attack that tricks the user into clicking on one thing but then performs a different action, such as following a user on Twitter.

X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block – This allows the browser to detect a cross site reflection attack. If the browser sees a potential reflection attack, it will prevent the page from rendering in the browser. Instead, you will see something similar to this depending on the browser:

What about Facebook?
While these preventions are by no means ground breaking or new, the fact that Google is thinking about and using them is a good step. In contrast, let’s look at a typical Facebook response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control: public, max-age=604800 Content-Type: application/x-javascript; charset=utf-8 Expires: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:46:37 GMT P3P: CP="Facebook does not have a P3P policy. Learn why here: http://fb.me/p3p" X-Frame-Options: DENY Set-Cookie: _e_syaN_0=deleted; expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT; path=/; domain=.facebook.com; httponly X-FB-Server: 10.52.238.45 X-Cnection: close Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:46:37 GMT Content-Length: 24032

It is surprising that Facebook has not taken the same simple precautions that Google+ has taken. Here, we can see the differences:

	Secure Cookie	Nosniff	XSS Protection	X-Frame	HttpOnly Cookie	SSL
Google+	Yes	Yes	Yes	Sameorigin	Yes	Yes
Facebook	No	No	No	Deny	Yes	Optional and not default

In fact, just yesterday Microsoft’s Vulnerability Research team released advisory MSVR11-007: “Clickjacking Vulnerability in Facebook.com Could Allow Account Compromise”. According to the advisory, Facebook has resolved the issue. I did another check of the headers and still did not see any change to the response. It is possible that Facebook closed the hole on the server side with input validation in order to prevent the malicious data from entering their database, but they still did not implement the simple browser precautions that Google+ has. Here is the link to the official MSVR advisory:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/msvr11-007.mspx

The folks from SecTheory/WhiteHat Security have an excellent write-up on Clickjacking. For detailed information on this vulnerability visit:
http://www.sectheory.com/clickjacking.htm

Conclusion
Unfortunately, not all of these headers are supported in all browsers, meaning any of you still using IE6 won’t be able to take advantage of these headers. What’s this mean for you? Make sure you are using an up-to-date browser to take full advantage of these protections.

Do these security measures make Google+ impervious to malicious activities? Absolutely not. Is it a good start? Yes, it is. And further, it is good to see an app make its debut with security in mind. It actually gives us Infosec folks a bit of hope that developers are listening and doing the right thing.

Landing as a Permanent Resident

2011-08-15T16:21:00Z

I landed as a Permanent Resident of Canada in Toronto (at Pearson, YYZ) on Friday the 12th of August.

The flight in from Seattle, all 4-1/2 hours of it, was quiet and uneventful. I was nervous from the get-go. While I had brought some snacks to eat and entertainment to read and watch and listen to, I wasn't hungry and I couldn't focus long enough to read or listen or watch anything but the landscape passing by 38,000 feet below and the cycle of information presented by the in-flight map in front if me: altitude, speed, current time in Seattle, current time in Toronto, distance to destination, time to destination: over and over I watched as it ticked down and I closed in on the moment my Love and I had waited for for the better part of the last decade if you count all the time we've spent pursuing our immigration case.

I landed at Pearson and after a long walk with other passengers through Terminal 1, snaked through the long quay at Customs and Immigration. I let the officer there know that I was immigrating to Canada as a Permanent Resident and he made lots of marks on my customs declaration form, then directed me behind him and to the right where the Immigration office was located. This is where the actual "landing" process takes place.

I stood in line again with people from all over the world and who were there for a range of purposes. Some with tears in their eyes had been refused entry; some were going through a secondary check because they were entering for business purposes; and one other person, like me, was there to immigrate.

When my turn came and I was directed to an officer, the process itself was very straightforward. I handed the officer my passport, which contained a special immigrant Visa and a form called the "Confirmation of Permanent Residence" (COPR). The officer asked a handful of questions regarding the information on my COPR form, whether I was immigrating alone or if others were following, how much money I was bringing with me into the country, whether I had been in trouble with the law in any country (including my own). The questions were straightforward and I answered them easily. The officer wasn't there to trip me up, simply to confirm information on my application and the visa issued.

Next the officer reviewed a record of my file on her computer. This took awhile because my Love and I had a big file. You get one of those when you are conjugal partners and your case takes years to process. After she had reviewed it, she had me sign my COPR in a number of places, then she detached my copy and stapled it to my passport. She let me know that I would have a Permanent Resident card mailed to me within about six weeks at my Toronto address and that while I could travel out of the country, I could not return to the country without it.

With the first of two interviews complete, I moved to the area where I would declare the goods I was arriving with and those I would be importing later (remember the forms I've been mentioning - the B4 and B4a? This is where these came into play). The officer doing this review was as nice as the first officer I encountered. He took my lists of items (you need to have a copy for Customs and one for yourself) and generated the official forms for me to sign. The only mistake I had made was that I didn't calculate the total value of my lists. But he handed me his iPhone and in a flash, I was done.

"Welcome to Canada." He said with a smile. Those words were music to my ears.

Despite the stress I had in anticipation of this process, because I was well prepared, it went very smoothly. The officials I encountered were all thoughtful and professional. I think they realize how stressful immigration is for people. They see it every day - they are on the front lines.

I pushed my cart of a couple suitcases (I saw families bringing in literally dozens, so I felt pretty efficient) thorough two sets of doors and there was my Love waiting for me on the other side. We embraced a long time, my head sinking into her embrace. "We made it," I said.

"And now we can think about the future," she said.

Layla's story: jailed after reporting a sexual assault

2011-08-13T12:32:47Z

Shared by ashok
Bloody hell.

Sara Ibrahim says that since the day her little sister Layla was sent to prison, her family has been faced with a simple choice: "Do we give up and just get on with our lives, or do we clear her name? And we've decided if it takes the rest of our lives, that's what we'll do – we'll clear her name."

It was a couple of weeks after she reported being attacked in the early hours of a cold January morning in 2009 that Layla Ibrahim, then 21, noticed a change in the attitude of the police. Yes, the police had documented the injuries to the back of her head and breasts, the black eye, the bleeding from her vagina. They had listened closely as she described the two strangers who attacked her, how the main perpetrator had worn a Nike hoodie, how she thought she had temporarily lost consciousness after being knocked to the ground, how she had felt a "thud" in her vagina but had no clear recollection of what had happened.

The police had seemed sympathetic as she explained how she tried to fend off her attackers with a pair of blunt scissors, and how the second assailant grabbed hold of them and started cutting her hair. Layla told them how eventually she had made her way home, running and bawling, almost feral with fear. The case quickly became high profile, as the local newspaper reported that the police had set up an incident room staffed by 30-40 officers and described it as "one of the city's biggest manhunts".

But a couple of weeks later it was as if the police were investigating an entirely different case, one in which the suspect was Layla herself. The police suggested she had acted in a strange manner when they first went to see her – crying one minute, laughing the next; that she had been aggressive. They talked about inconsistencies in her evidence.

At first Layla thought it understandable – of course, the police wanted to clarify what she had told them – but when they kept questioning her story, she became unnerved. She'd told them the batteries were flat on her mobile phone, but they seemed to think it odd that it wasn't working. And they told her the forensics suggested there was no soil on her clothing from the grass where she said she had been attacked.

"That's when I said I didn't want to answer any more questions without a solicitor," she writes in a letter from prison. "They asked why I wanted a solicitor and I said, 'Because I don't feel like I'm the victim.'"

It wasn't Layla who first heard the news her attack was no longer under investigation. Instead, the police contacted her mother at the school in Carlisle where she works as a senior teaching assistant to tell her they suspected Layla of fabricating her story and inflicting the injuries on herself.

"A detective came round and put all these photos of Layla's hair round the floor and said it looked to them as if she'd walked and cut her hair and dropped it," says Sandra Allen, Layla's mother. The DCI told her she thought the injuries to Layla's knee were suspicious. "I asked her what she meant, and she said, 'Well, it looks as if Layla just took something and slashed herself on the knee.' And I said it was winter, she'd fallen, it was iced – why would you think that?"

Layla was told she would be charged with wasting police time if she didn't drop the case. She refused – after all, she said, she'd been violently attacked. Eventually, the charge was upped to the more serious offence of perverting the course of justice. A year later, in June 2010, Layla – then six months pregnant – was convicted and sentenced to three years.

The story of Layla Ibrahim, now 23, is as bizarre as it is alarming. How can a woman end up jailed after reporting an attack on herself? And when there appeared to be powerful evidence of the savagery of the assault?

Layla had been out drinking with friends in Carlisle in early January 2009. They went on a mini pub-crawl, and she was drunk by the end of the evening but, she says, not out of control. She had no money left and says she asked her friend Richard Dent if he could lend her £10 or share a cab. When he refused, she was surprised but decided to walk home through a pathway by the River Eden known as the Cut.

Layla would later describe the two men who sprang out of the darkness as young – not much older than her own teenage brother – and said that the one whose face she saw looked like a drug addict with a "hollow, sucky-in face". She struggled home at around 4am, and banged on the door of her oldest sister Samira, who lives round the corner from her mother. Samira called the police, who arrived a couple of hours later.

We are chatting in Sandra's home in Carlisle as Layla's other sister Sara returns to the living room with a tray of drinks and chocolate biscuits. Sandra lived in Libya for many years with her then husband – the Libyan father of her children – and speaks fluent Arabic.

What troubles the family is the evidence they say could have proved her innocence. Male blood was found at the scene, but it was dismissed because it did not belong to one of the suspects and did not match anything on the DNA database. A male blond pubic hair was found on Layla that Rosemary Swain, the doctor who examined her, said would be crucial evidence against her attackers. But the family later learned it had been destroyed in the forensics lab.

The police did not take the cardigan Layla had been wearing for DNA testing. Although it was later handed in by the family, it had been lying around the house and might have been worn by other family members or even washed. Layla's shoes were not tested for DNA, although one shoe was alleged to have been held by an attacker. Her leggings were not tested for DNA, nor was her bra fully checked, although blood was found on it.

Layla's description of one of the attackers closely matched that of a suspect in other attacks in the area. Layla's family and a case worker who represented her believe that one of the many troubling aspects of her conviction is that while Layla is in jail, her attackers are out there, posing a threat to women.

The thing that did most to put Layla behind bars was the pair of scissors. Layla told the police how they were used against her by her attackers. The police claimed she had taken them with her to fake the attack. They pointed to the fact that Layla's DNA was on the scissors, as was fabric from her dress. But Layla says there is a straightforward explanation.

"Of course my DNA was on the scissors – they are my scissors," she writes. "I have always carried scissors with me since I was in school. I'm quite big-chested and my bras come undone because the metal bit inside comes out. My mum taught me to always carry scissors, needle and thread."

Asked about Layla Ibrahim, the director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer – who was briefed on the case after Sara visited him earlier this year but has so far declined to intervene – confirmed the scissors had been a crucial piece of prosecution evidence. "Much greater store was put on the evidence about the scissors than was put on the inconsistencies [in Layla's account of what happened]," he says.

As so often in such situations, the circumstances are confused. In her first statement, Layla said the second attacker had cut her hair, and it was only later, when running, that she discovered her dress was also torn. Layla later said the boys might have cut her dress, too – she simply couldn't remember. To complicate matters, Layla's mother Sandra had cut the dress under the armpit earlier that evening where it was tight.

The fact that Layla couldn't remember everything was an important part of the case against her, too. She doesn't dispute it; even today her memory of what happened is partial and muggy. "He [the first attacker] fell on top of me, and I don't really remember a lot after that. I woke up, well, it felt like I was waking up. And it hurt down below," she writes.

Layla’s sister, Sara Ibrahim, and her mother, Sandra Allen: 'All I want is someone to explain how my daughter can go through the horror of being attacked to end up in prison with her baby.' Photograph: Gary Calton

The family are wary of the police. Had they ever had cause to call on them before? Sara and Sandra look at each other, waiting to see who answers first.

The Ibrahims have always felt they stood out in Carlisle. Sara says when she was young there was only a handful of mixed-race families in the town. It wasn't always easy growing up there.

"I was brought up to respect the police," Sandra says. Her family is from Carlisle, she grew up here, later moving to Libya for work, where she met her husband. She returned to the UK when Layla was nine. But moving back with four mixed-race children brought its own problems. "My very first dealings with the police were when we came to England and that boy beat you up," Sandra reminds her daughter.

Sara laughs, quietly. "I had a few beatings because I was black. I can't remember which one you mean."

Sandra: "Sara got seriously beat up and the police didn't want to know. All the neighbours ran out, everyone was screaming and shouting. Sara's head was smashed up. The police came but didn't even look at her. It was just like 'these things happen'."

"They arrested me," Sara says, still bewildered all these years later. "In the scuffle, the boy got a scratch. We were so naive, the police asked us into the police station and me and Mum were like, 'Oh, they've just invited us in for a chat' and they arrested me! I was put on bail and we were back and forward to and from the police station."

Some time later, Sandra's son Taraq, then aged 12, had a series of run-ins with the police. He was arrested time and again by the same officer, but never charged. Sandra went to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The issue was resolved by Cumbria constabulary, who admitted the officer had "targeted" Taraq "to deter him from committing crime".

Layla had no history of depression or self-harm before January 2009. A report by an independent psychologist, prepared for the court in advance of Layla's trial, concluded she was suffering from post-traumatic stress as a result of the attack, and found it difficult to explain why she would have fabricated it.

"Motives for false rape allegations have been found to be seeking attention or sympathy from others or revenge against others," wrote Carolyn John, a consultant clinical psychologist with 21 years' experience and the lead consultant for Newcastle Upon Tyne's acute adult mental health service. "I could find no motive for deliberate self-harm or for Ms Ibrahim having malingered. I could find nothing in her personality profile that might lead to attention-seeking or a lowered threshold for histrionic or antisocial behaviour that might amount to wasting police time."

John also pointed to various factors that undermined the evidence used against Layla. In terms of inconsistencies, she cited Layla's dyslexia as a reason for her mislabelling of left/right, and concussion following the blow to her head as a reason for her memory problems. John also raised the conditions in which Layla was interviewed: a lengthy process during which a male officer was present and she was not given anything to eat for hours.

Dr Rosemary Swain, a GP and specialist in sexual assault medical examinations who examined Layla shortly after the incident, reached the same conclusion, forming the view that Layla had indeed been subjected to a sexual assault. Despite working for the police, Swain would later give evidence in Layla's defence at her trial.

But the investigation into Layla continued. In February 2009, a month after the incident, Layla attempted suicide by throwing herself into a river. She was rescued by a passerby and taken to hospital where she seized a used needle and tried to cut her wrists.

Layla was identified as high risk and referred for a psychiatric assessment. The psychiatrist who assessed her did not find any mental health problems but instead enduring trauma resulting from the recent attack. "This is a 21-year-old woman with evidence of an adjustment disorder in relation to a sexual assault one month earlier," his report concluded. Sandra says Layla became desperate and despairing, unrecognisable from the daughter she knew.

Layla writes that while it is too late for her to be spared jail, one of the reasons she is determined to draw attention to her case is to help other women in the same position.

"We know of 30 women jailed for so-called false allegations of rape in the past 12 months," says Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape. "Such prosecutions must be stopped. It is a galling diversion for women to be jailed when the vast majority of rapists are not – 90% of rapes are never reported and only 6.7% of those that are reach conviction on a full charge of rape. The prosecution of women and the disproportionate media coverage they get are putting rape victims off reporting and leaving all of us more vulnerable to attack. Is that what they want?"

Starmer insists that discouraging women from reporting rape is the last thing prosecutors want. Under his leadership, the CPS last month published new guidance stating that individuals who retract rape allegations out of fear will be protected from prosecution. "Rape and domestic violence victims should be confident in reporting abuse without fear of prosecution if they are later pressured into retracting the allegation," Starmer said, responding to a controversial court of appeal case in which a woman had her prison sentence overturned after judges found she had been pressured into withdrawing a rape claim by her abusive husband.

Yet this new guidance offers no comfort for the likes of Layla Ibrahim: women who are accused of falsifying rape allegations still face prosecution. The guidance in fact states that prosecution is more likely when the allegation is believed to be made maliciously or over a sustained period of time – in other words, there is now an incentive to withdraw rape allegations if victims feel the police disbelieve them. Starmer has introduced a further check in the system, however, requiring all prosecutions against people accused of falsifying rape claims to be authorised by his office before proceeding. Would this have saved Layla? It's impossible to say, but he acknowledges that there may be women in jail now who would not have been prosecuted under the new regime.

One thing that would have stopped Layla from going to prison is if she had given in to the police's attempts to persuade her to withdraw her account of the attack. But Layla writes that she always felt confident that, as the victim, she would eventually be believed and was concerned that her attackers needed to be caught.

When her case came to court, Layla believes she was a disaster in the witness box. "I froze. I was like a rabbit stuck in headlights because I was beyond nervous. I didn't really understand what they were asking. I definitely don't think I did a good job."

There were other reasons Layla ended up being convicted, too. Her ex-boyfriend Nikki White, who had not been with her on the night, gave a statement saying they had argued (about a tomato sandwich). The prosecution argued she had faked the attack as a form of revenge. In his statement, he also said that Richard Dent, who had been out with Layla that night, told him afterwards that when he refused to share a cab home with her, Layla had said, "If anything happens to me, you will be sorry." Yet Dent made no mention of this when interviewed at the time, only confirming it was true in a second statement more than a year later.

Layla and her family believed there were criticisms to be made in court of the police investigation. But Jane Meyes, a caseworker at Geoffrey Clapp solicitors in Carlisle who advised Layla, points out that the tone of the trial was set by a horrific crime that had just happened in the area. On 2 June 2010, a local taxi driver Derrick Bird had gone on a shooting spree, killing 12 people. A couple of weeks later, when Layla's trial started, funerals were being held for those killed. A solicitor friend of both barristers and the judge had died in the shootings, and the trial was suspended for one day so they could attend the funeral. The police had been vilified in the national press for not stopping Bird earlier, and Meyes believes there was little appetite in court for further criticisms of the police. "Lots of little things went wrong at trial," she says, "but the massive thing was the Cumbria shootings. The atmosphere was extraordinary."

Instead, Layla's lawyers concentrated on her injuries. "The strategy was to show that the scientific evidence proved Layla couldn't have done it," Meyes explains. Five expert witnesses gave evidence for her. Forensic physician Dr Catherine White examined Layla's injuries – swelling to the back of her head, abrasions on her cheek, injuries to her breasts, scratches on her knee, damage to the perineum and bruising on her hymen. Most of these injuries, White concluded, "would be very unusual to have been [self-inflicted]… particularly in someone without a history of such in the past or a severe mental health problem."

Meyes says the prosecution managed to paint a brilliantly damning, but she thinks misleading, portrait of Layla. "Like her explanation of why she had the scissors. It made her look clever. Much cleverer than she is, poor Layla. Looked at in the whole, I think it's impossible she did it. But we lost every bloody point."

Although fresh counsel pointed out apparent flaws in the evidence, he advised the family there were insufficient grounds for appeal at present because of a lack of new evidence. Other barristers have expressed an interest in pursuing an appeal.

When sentencing Layla, Judge Paul Batty QC said: "Your behaviour throughout the proceedings has been irresponsible in the extreme and many would say wicked. You tore your own clothing, you cut your body with a pair of scissors, you feigned illness and injury. I'm entirely clear in this case that you craved attention. You wanted your friends to think they had left you in the position where they thought you were the subject of a serious sexual attack. You wanted to teach them a lesson."

When she heard the verdict, Layla collapsed. She was immediately remanded to the category A prison Low Newton in County Durham. "It was the worst place I've ever been to in my life," she writes. "You were among people like Rose West, and the Baby P killer, and you just think, 'What am I doing here?' They were eating dinner with us.

"I'd pretty much broken down by that point. I didn't eat, didn't socialise. They'd unlock my cell and I'd lock myself back up… I was getting called names because I'd been on the news, it was just horrible." After six weeks, Layla was sent to Durham infirmary where her daughter was born and a week later she was transferred to the mother and baby unit at the open prison Askham Grange.

Layla says it's her baby who has kept her going. "I'm a much stronger person now. After having her I had more to live for – my concentration's on coming out and giving her everything, getting a job." With good behaviour, she will be released in a few weeks on home detention curfew, required to wear a tag. But after struggling to overcome her dyslexia and obtain her childcare qualification, Layla's only hope of being able to work with children again is appealing against her conviction and clearing her name. "Childcare is now not an option," she writes. "I was also starting my NVQ in elderly care but neither of those are now possible."

While Layla has regained her strength, the past year has knocked the stuffing out of her mother. Sandra says she stayed strong until Layla was convicted, then she broke down. "In my mad times, nobody was allowed to drink coffee because Layla couldn't have it, nobody was allowed to eat, Christmas was cancelled, birthdays were cancelled." Did she want people to suffer like Layla? "Not suffer. Just share it. I think I was very, very close… to losing it. I never ate or drank for a week, I could hardly move at the end of it. I was constantly stuck in front of the computer trying to find someone who could explain how this happened to her. That's all I still want, someone to explain how my daughter can go through the horror of being attacked to end up in prison with her baby."

You can see the pain and exhaustion in her face. "How can you give my daughter three years, when she's never done anything wrong in her life? I still couldn't understand it if, God forbid, she had done it, but she hasn't. She's never been in trouble, she's worked hard, she's done everything right. Why was she sentenced to three years in prison? I can't understand it, and nobody will give me the answer."

Layla Ibrahim was released on home detention curfew last week after serving 13 months in jail.

Test Your Vocabulary

2011-07-17T11:54:01Z

Test your English vocabulary size, and measure how many words you know. For children, adults and EFL/ESL learners.

With ‘Newsgate’, the Australian ABC shows us the way again

2011-07-16T11:12:16Z

One of the benefits of new platforms is that we can launch new radio stations instantly. They appear automatically to radio listeners on the same DAB multiplex, and can be easily linked online. They’re simple to promote, and add real listener choice. If you own your own multiplex, they’re also virtually free in terms of transmission costs.

You can’t have missed the coverage over the past few weeks about the News of the World phone hacking. This coverage would undoubtedly benefit from a little more depth: details about the Murdoch empire, detail and biographical information about the people involved, and full, uninterrupted coverage of the relevant Commons Select Committees and Parliament discussions.

Once more, Australia are showing us the way with a brand new, temporary ‘pop-up’ radio station, ABC UK Newsgate. With archive material from the ABC, as well as live coverage, it’s an ideal additional choice for Australian taxpayers who fund the ABC, and a great way to promote the benefits of digital radio, on whatever platform.

Even though the story is taking place on our patch, our own broadcasters – the BBC or commercial radio – have, once more, failed to grasp the benefits of temporary radio stations and the cross-promotional opportunities these represent.

The government wishes to ensure promotion of digital radio; broadcasters are keen to avoid the costs of multiple transmissions; we have a 50%-listening target to reach by end 2013 which many broadcasters are keen to hit; listeners are clearly keen for more detail; yet, once more, we’ve dropped the ball.

On digital radio, Australia is covering a UK news story in more depth than we are in the UK. Should we merely be embarrassed, or be ashamed?

(The press release follows)

ABC RADIO LAUNCHES ‘ABC UK NEWSGATE’
Saturday 16 July 2011

ABC Radio will launch a special digital radio station to coincide with the appearance of current and former News Limited executives before the UK Parliamentary committee investigating phone hacking.

The station, ABC UK Newsgate, will broadcast from 8pm Tuesday 19 July (EST). It will feature archival material including two features on the Murdoch’s from ABC Radio’s flagship current affairs program Background Briefing: Why is James so Angry? (2010) and Who Owns the News? (2009), along with a People In Power feature from 1966 featuring Rupert Murdoch when he bought News of the World.

The station will broadcast the appearance of Rupert and James Murdoch, and Rebekah Brooks live from 11.30pm until the conclusion of their testimony from the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the UK Parliament, followed by analysis from the BBC and ABC.

ABC UK Newsgate will broadcast on digital radio in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth from 8pm Tuesday 19 July (EST). ABC NewsRadio will also broadcast their appearance nationally from 11.30pm (EST).

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Post tags: radio
These are my personal views | Full disclosure

Phone hacking: Q&A with Alan Rusbridger

2011-07-08T10:20:20Z

The Guardian's editor debates with readers from 2.30pm about issues arising from the phone-hacking scandal

Five Chinese Crackers: Disgraceful fact-free scaremongering from Sue Reid at the Daily Mail

2011-06-24T12:35:19Z

See the picture on the left? Nice, isn't it? Cutie little sick kiddie and nurse. Warms the cockles of your heart. Who'd look at that and not smile and think, "ahhhhh. Innat nice?"

The answer is Sue Reid, lazy disgrace of a Daily Mail hack, who in October 2007 offered money and free accommodation in her Fulham flat to Polish people - provided they'd come to London in their Polish registered car and break traffic laws so she could take pictures for a story about how Polish people come to Britain and break the law in their Polish registered cars. In August this year, she compared the number of jobseekers in some areas in a one month period with the number of migrants in these areas over a whole year to make it look like there were more migrants competing for work in those areas than there actually were. Class act.

To her, the baby in the picture represents a strain on your NHS; providing of course the baby's mum was born abroad. And I'm sure Sue Reid would assume she was.

'Mapping out the strain on your NHS: 243 sick babies treated in one London hospital ward.... and just 18 mothers come from Britain' is as horrific an article as it sounds. Uponnothing has covered this in 'Paul Dacre must die', and I can see why he's so angry about it. Notice how it talks about your NHS. It can't be the 'foreign' mothers' NHS. Absolutely none of them are taxpaying UK citizens.

This has to be one of the laziest, most xenophobic and underhanded scaremongering articles I have ever read. And I regularly read the Daily Mail, so that really is saying something. The story, in a nutshell, is this: on the wall of a children's ward in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is a map that mothers can put a sticker on to show where they were born. There are lots of stickers on countries across the world, but not very many on the UK. That's it. That's the story. The rest is a bunch of scaremongering stastrickery based on that weak, weak piece of evidence.

Now, if you or I saw that map, we might realise that the whole bloody point of it is to show how many different places the mothers were born so the hospital can show off about how far and wide the parents they have helped are spread. We might realise that women born in the UK are less likely to add a sticker, since they might think it's not interesting. We even, if we thought about it hard, might realise that it isn't really very possible to add a lot of stickers to the UK on a world map since the UK will be very, very small, adding too many will make them fall off - we'd at least realise that seeing the UK already covered in dots would make someone less likely to add another.

Sue Reid, though, would look at it and think, 'Yes! Immigration scare story!' and start rubbing her hands (and to be honest, there's probably not very much that wouldn't make her do that). There is some pretty skilful scene setting before we get to the meat of the article, which is hung entirely from the unsubstantiated assertion of an anonymous source.

She said: 'Almost every cot and incubator at this wonderful unit was occupied by a baby with a foreign mother. Interpreters were on hand to make sure the mothers understood the doctors.

'Babies' lives are being saved and that is a good thing.

The 'almost every cot and incubator' bit is almost certainly a massive, massive exaggeration (this claim is not substantiated anywhere in the article with any actual figures from the actual hospital - not very much is). But at least the 'London-born mother' says that babies' lives being saved is a good thing. Only someone incredibly heartless, definitely xenophobic and perhaps a little bit racist would follow this up with a 'but', right? I'm sorry to have to say, I missed a bit off the end of that quote there:

Yet this seemed like a free-for-all.

Check out the weasel word 'seemed' - to make this a statement of perception rather than fact. The article then actually lambasts doctors for treating children if their parents have been in the UK for less than a year, and - in a completely unsubstantiated and inexpertly manufactured connection - indirectly brands the mothers on the Chelsea and Westminster map health tourists. And that's before it weaves in alarmist immigration stats to prove something or other.

This story really is a piece of work. For instance, Sue Reid helpfully points out that:

Even in Chelsea (an area less associated with immigration) the figure [of children born to mothers born overseas] is 67 percent, according to a recent Government report.

What she doesn't point out is that Chelsea and Westminster mainly serves seven areas of London - four of which have a lower than 67 per cent level of mothers born overseas. She also doesn't substantiate the claim about low immigration in Chelsea, only making a claim that it's 'less associated' with immigration. Perhaps because Chelsea is 'more associated' with rich people, and rich people can't be born overseas.

But the central claim of the article - that a disproportionate number of mothers of children treated in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital were born overseas (and that this is evidence of widespread 'health tourism') - is never actually substantiated.

The only piece of evidence is a map that has no indication of how old it is, no indication of the proportion of mothers who add a sticker, and absolutely no indication at all of how many of those mothers would have been in the UK for less than a year. We don't even know that '243 sick babies [were] treated' - there were probably hundreds more in the time this map has been on the wall, most of whom never placed a dot on it. The lazy trickery of tying this in with 'health tourism' is astounding. We even have vast swathes of the article devoted to how many people have 'settled' in the UK without pointing out that these people will mostly be British citizens now anyway. Many of these mothers will be taxpaying UK citizens, and the NHS belongs to 'them' as much as it does 'us'.

Reid could have looked at the Chelsea and Westminster website and put her 225 foreign mothers in perspective:

We are one of London’s largest providers of children’s services, caring for more than 8,000 children as inpatients and more than 30,000 as outpatients every year. More than 30,000 children are treated in our children’s emergency care department every year.

Actually, it's probably lucky she didn't. She probably would have extrapolated percentages and pretended that tens of thousands of foreign children were treated while only 18 of them had British born mothers. And the tens of thousands were health tourists.

But the worst thing about this article is that I suspect that the 'London-born' mother is either made up, someone who Sue Reid knows personally, or is Sue Reid herself. Chelsea and Westminster is Sue Reid's local hospital. This article looks to me much more like Reid saw the poster herself and spun a spurious story out of it.

She claims to have received the photo of the poster in the summer, and we only get the story now. Did Reid just not bother researching by asking the hospital for figures (an FoI request takes three weeks), or did she do that and get answers she didn't like?

I have first hand knowledge of this hospital. I've been treated there myself, visited several family members there, including children. Some of my family were actually born there. I sorely hope that nobody close to Reid required treatment in hospital here - and I wouldn't blame her for keeping that to herself if anyone did.

That doesn't change the fact that this whole article is an absolute disgrace of embarrassingly bad journalism, based on smoke-and-mirrors and bogeymen. Or rather, bogeychildren.

Don't forget to check out Angry Mob.

**UPDATE** Since I wrote this, the scare story has almost been ruined with a statement from the hospital that has naturally been stuffed to the bottom of the story where few readers will reah. Those who do might well assume the statement isn't true:

The hospital also issued the following statement: 'Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is a specialist referral centre and cares for patients of many different backgrounds, reflecting London’s very diverse population.

'Of the 550 babies admitted to our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) every year, a very small number of these are overseas patients. In 2009, there have been just two overseas admissions.

'The map was placed in the NICU nearly four years ago to provide the families of the babies we care for, as well as staff, with an opportunity to indicate their background if they wished. It is not an indication of country of residence or citizenship.

'It was intended to illustrate the diversity of staff working on the unit and the families of the babies we care for, to encourage everyone to reflect on different cultures, in a fun and informal way.

'Chelsea and Westminster Hospital’s NICU provides intensive care, high dependency and special care facilities for babies and is a specialist referral centre for neonatal surgery.'

550 babies in one year were treated in this ward, but only 243 over a period of 4 years added dots to the map. That's such a scientific way of measuring things, Sue Reid should get a job at NASA.

**UPDATE UPDATE** I'm about to go away for the weekend, so I'll be turning comment moderation on until I get back. Do post your comments though, and I'll publish them on Monday.

Google searches help Bank of England accurately predict UK economy

2011-06-13T11:20:38Z

Shared by ashok
Unclear from this story whether it's result frequency, or search frequency that's being used.

Regardless, I wonder how they'll correct for people gaming the metric to manipulate Bank behaviour.

Bank of England has indicated that Google searches have helped predict how unemployment and house prices will fluctuate in the UK.

Mobile bottler is the toast of B.C. wineries

2011-05-30T12:06:08Z

On an overcast Sunday afternoon, Norm Cole rolls up the driveway of Laughing Stock Vineyards pulling a 32-foot trailer that wouldn’t look out of place hauling cattle on a ranch in Alberta.

With the skill of a big-rig trucker, Cole inches the oversized unit along a narrow driveway cut into the hillside above Okanagan Lake, until the rear bumper nudges the entrance of Laughing Stock’s warehouse.

He greets winery owner David Enns with a handshake and throws open the back of the trailer, revealing a self-contained bottling line capable of churning out 1,200 cases of wine a day.

Treasure Wheels

2011-05-10T02:19:12Z

Treasure Wheels™ is an urban dolly kit that fits in a satchel and is a must-have tool for urban scavengers. Treasure Wheels™ lets you wheel those urban treasures home, by simply attaching the wheels to the artifact of your fancy, and get rolling.

Nothing short of brilliant!

(Thank you Yael)

beer in focus, boys blurry

2011-05-09T06:14:17Z

kellyclairehoffer posted a photo:

All I Ever Did Was Love Beer, So Why Is It Giving Me This Sexist Crap?

2011-05-27T10:57:40Z

Shared by ashok
I see no reason why we men shouldn't follow her lead. (Although I can't in good conscience say I was ever likely to drink XX, Heineken, Bud light or their like.)

I am, as of today, only buying beers that don’t condescend to me.