Marth 10th, 2004

What happened on March 10th, 2004 was made clear by James Comey's Senate testimony on May 15th, 2007. According to one Senator as the hearing, the incident was nothing he had heard of in his 25 years of Senate service. Or as the Washington Post put it, 'so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source.'

It's more drama then Hollywood movies, and is enriched with guns, presidential order, intensive care room visit, FBI holding off White House chief of staff, and a total resignation of top law enforcement officers in the nation including Attorney General John Ashcroft, Acting Attorney General James Comey and the FBI director Robert S. Mueller III joined by almost entire Department of Justice senior staff.

Well, can't resist the humor of his Washington Post columnist:

Waterboarding Ashcroft

Every Republican candidate is jockeying to prove he's scarier than the guy to his left or right. Last night at the GOP debate only McCain took a strong stand against torture. Most of the rest endorsed "enhanced interrogation techniques." Tom Tancredo endorsed the Jack Bauer method of questioning suspected terrorists. Waterboarding? Whatever!

You know that this is the methodology that Gonzales would have used on Ashcroft in the hospital if Comey hadn't raced to Ashcroft's rescue. A man in intensive care is known to be succeptible to enhanced interrogation techniques. John, we have ways of making you sign this document.

Sometimes I wonder if some of the people in this Administration are not entirely...what is the word...nice. Card said he and Gonzales "were just there to wish him well." That's Washington: Everyone always looking for an opportunity to succor the ailing. [Comey testified, fyi, that Bush called the hospital room and that's how Mrs. Ashcroft learned that Gonzales and Card were on the way.] Comey's testimony turns a known event into a scene from Hollywood. I'm seeing Andy Garcia as Gonzales and Gene Hackman as Ashcroft. Andy Card? Maybe Charlie Sheen in a comeback role. And Comey has to be either Matthew McConaughey or that cat who looks just like him.

Developer in Nanjing Stripped Nuns

Two nuns who lived in a Buddhism temple were stripped and thrown out of the Five Goddess (Wu Xian) Temple in the Jiangning District around 12:20 am April 28th, 2007 by a Nanjing real estate developer. Scriptures and statues were destroyed and the nuns were stripped and mocked. The developer demanded the temple for commercial development, but the two nuns did not agree. No one has been charged for the incident.

No place is safe in China from brutality of commercial developers, not even a temple.

The Third Bird Must be The Chinese Spy, Or Not?

A third person was accused of spying for the Chinese government last year when he was arrested. However, the case fell apart when the prosecutors presented zero evident to the court. Still the person was found guilty (on a lesser charge).

The name is Chi Mak, who was the chief engineer of Power Paragon Inc, a Department of Defense contractor. He was under continuous surveillance for 18 months before his arrest last year.

Before we call a person a spy, we would do a test:
1) Does Mak have intent to spy?
2) Has any classified information been passed?

Chi Mak, a naturalized US citizen, repeatedly vowed his loyalty to the States. There's no evidents whatsoever on his intention.

The focus of the trail was 3 CD-Rom that Mak burned and asked his brother to take back to Hong Kong. He asked his brother to give the CDs to three persons, a Hong Kong professor, a Hong Kong engineer, and a family friend Mr. Pu in Guang Zhou. The prosecution said Mr. Pu was Mr. Mak's up-link in Chinese spy agency.

What on the CD was a selection of Mr. Mak's papers published in earlier conferences. The paper could be purchased for a fee by anyone with a credit card from a public website. The paper was also presented in conferences attended by scholars from all over the world, particularly including scholars and students from mainland China. Mr Mak's colleagues and boss all testified that they believed the paper were not confidential and harmless to the national interest of the US. They all testified that Mr. Mak were allowed to take these papers home or show them to anyone.

The catch was a little know rarely practiced restriction to the passing of information to China. There's a list of less than 20 countries and areas where the US sees as threats. Information passing to these areas is subject to strict constraints. China was added to the list after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in June 4th, 1989, partially as a political gesture. In reality, due to the connections between the two countries, the policy was never really executed. In other words, Mr. Mak was allowed to publish his paper to the world, and publishers were acting legally when posting the paper on the web where everyone can browse, but when Mr. Mak personally taking the files cross the border of the US, he was accused of spying for China.

After 18 months of close monitoring, including video, audio and wiretapping, all the evidents FBI could produce were the 3 CD-ROMs with same contents of public available research papers to three research collaborators. For Mr. Mak, it's a 35 years prison time, but does that matter to an overzealous prosecution?

The alleged classified materials never surface. Not even one bit of classified information passing had been found in the 18 months close surveillance. Now the government dropped the espionage charge, but instead charged the Maks for transferring public domain knowledge to China. As one reader Michael Deal posted on the New York Sun's website: "I'm no fan of the Chinese Communist Party or their American puppets, the Republican Party, but this is a question of what the law is, rather than what the law should be. Information, even about military affairs, that is available to the public at large, is protected by the First Amendment."

The trail goes like a comedy, if for a moment we can forget the a real persona, a real family's sufferings. The classified materials turned out to be public domain knowledge. Nothing is more drama when the court played the telephone conversation that sealed Chi Mak's fate. It was between Chi Mak and his 'Chinese military uplink' Mr. Pu Peiliang, a Sun Yet-sen University researcher, in which Mr. Mak said 'This is Hong Fa'. Hong Fa is the name of Mr. Mak's family business. The FBI agent, apparently not good in Chinese but nonetheless good in imagination, heard of it as 'Hong Hua (red flower)'. If you associate yourself of anything of red color, then you must be a red spy. Days later, Mr, Mak was arrested. It's this simple.

If we review our test, it's clear that answers to both questions are solid No.

Mr. Mak was not the first Chinese American fell in the trap of overzealous prosecutors. Mr. Wen-ho Lee of the Las Alamos National Lab was charged for spying. Ms. Katrina Leung was also charged for spying. Both cases were proven to be nothing but bogus.

All rising assistant attorneys, such as assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian in this case, needs convictions to pave their career path. Unfortunately, some found Chinese to be the easy shortcut.

Sources: ExportLaw Blog, The New York Sun

A Whistle Blower's Story of the Panasonic Battery Plants in Wuxi

Mr. Pan Wei, Deputy Director of the Human Resources of the Panasonic Battery Plants in Wuxi told his account of the recent Cadmium Poisoning Incident. Mr. Pan was fired for his performance in the incident.

The blog told a story of how the company hided the truth about the plant and employee's health exam results.

Atrocities Committed by Korean Troops

As a Japanese colony, Korean troops not only fought along the imperial Japanese military, but also were seen committing brutality on people of other south and eastern Asian countries.

In China, the first troop that started gang raping of women after occupying Nanjing, then capital city of China, was the Korean regiment of the 15th division.

In Vietnam War, a 47,000 strong Korean troops was responsible for slaughter of more than 5000 Vietnamese. The picture shows the aftermath of gang rape and slaughter of 1004 Vietnamese committed by the Capital(Tiger) Division of the Korean troops in a village of Binh Dinh province.

Welcome to America

A Tucson, AZ restaurant featuring Chinese takeout was the target of recent protest from Chinese and Asian communities for using racial slurs in its online website and menus. The owner, however, chose to ignore the protest.

Read its online website: "Every order is delivered via rickshaw by first generation Chinese immigrants … We really should charge more for delivery, old Chinamen are getting expensive these days."

On its menu, among others, "Don't say Flied Lice, it's not funny … there's no 'R' sound in Chinese, that's just cruel really … I know your (sic) saying it … Stop it Stop it Stop it! That's it. NO RICE FOR YOU!!!!"

Professor Nesson of Harvard: The University’s educational mission is broader than the RIAA’s demands

Professor Nesson: Protect Harvard from the RIAA
Charles Nesson

The following op-ed, Protect Harvard from the RIAA, co-written by HLS Professor Charles Nesson '60 and Wendy Seltzer '96, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, was published in The Harvard Crimson on May 1, 2007.

Since its founding, Harvard has been an educational leader. Its 1650 charter broadly conceives its mission to include "the advancement of all good literature, arts, and sciences, [and] the advancement and education of youth in all manner of good literature, arts, and sciences." From John Harvard’s library through today’s my.harvard.edu, the University has worked to create and spread knowledge, educating citizens within and outside its walls.

Students and faculty use the Internet to gather and share knowledge now more than ever. Law professors at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, for example, have conducted mock trials in the online environment of Second Life; law students have worked with faculty to offer cybercourses to the public at large. Students can collaborate on "wiki" websites, gather research materials from far-flung countries, and create multi-media projects to enhance their learning.

Yet "new deterrence and education initiatives" from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) threaten access to this vibrant resource. The RIAA has already requested that universities serve as conduits for more than 1,200 "pre-litigation letters." Seeking to outsource its enforcement costs, the RIAA asks universities to point fingers at their students, to filter their Internet access, and to pass along notices of claimed copyright infringement.

But these responses distort the University’s educational mission. They impose financial and non-monetary costs, including compromised student privacy, limited access to genuine educational resources, and restricted opportunities for new creative expression.

One can easily understand why the RIAA wants help from universities in facilitating its enforcement actions against students who download copyrighted music without paying for it. It is easier to litigate against change than to change with it. If the RIAA saw a better way to protect its existing business, it would not be threatening our students, forcing our librarians and administrators to be copyright police, and flooding our courts with lawsuits against relatively defenseless families without lawyers or ready means to pay. We can even understand the attraction of using lawsuits to shore up an aging business model rather than engaging with disruptive technologies and the risks that new business models entail.

But mere understanding is no reason for a university to voluntarily assist the RIAA with its threatening and abusive tactics. Instead, we should be assisting our students both by explaining the law and by resisting the subpoenas that the RIAA serves upon us. We should be deploying our clinical legal student training programs to defend our targeted students. We should be lobbying Congress for a roll back of the draconian copyright law that the copyright industry has forced upon us. Intellectual property can be efficient when its boundaries are relatively self-evident.

But when copyright protection starts requiring the cooperation of uninvolved parties, at the cost of both financial and mission harm, those external costs outweigh its benefits. We need not condone infringement to conclude that 19th- and 20th-century copyright law is poorly suited to promote 21st-century knowledge. The old copyright-business models are inefficient ways to give artists incentives in the new digital environment.

Both law and technology will continue to evolve. And as innovators develop new ways of sharing copyrighted material, the University should engage with both creators and the "fair users" who follow and build upon their works. Finding the right balance will be challenging, but projects such as Noank Media, developed by faculty and fellows at the Berkman Center, provides one glimpse into what the future may hold. Just this year, Noank Media became a functioning international corporation with operations in both China and Canada.

With the goal of fostering "limitless legal content flow" through innovative licensing deals, Noank makes shared music look "free" to its listeners while reimbursing the copyright holders directly for downloads of their materials. Noank does this by serving as an aggregator, collecting payment through institutions such as libraries and schools, as well as Internet Service Providers. Forward-thinking copyright holders recognize that this system may offer them more rewards, not less control.

The University’s educational mission is broader than the RIAA’s demands. We don’t have all the answers either, but rather than capitulating to special interests, we should continue to search for fair solutions that represent the University’s mission, its students, and the law in a way that educates students to be leaders of the digital 21st century.

Wendy M. Seltzer ’96 (HLS ’99) is a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Charles R. Nesson ’60 (HLS ’63) is William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founder and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.