North Korea on Saturday called US President Barack Obama a “monkey” for inciting cinemas to screen a comedy featuring a fictional plot to kill its leader, and blamed Washington for an Internet blackout this week.

The isolated dictatorship’s powerful National Defence Commission (NDC) threatened “inescapable deadly blows” over the film and accused the US of “disturbing the Internet operation” of North Korean media outlets.

The Internet outage triggered speculation that US authorities may have launched a cyber-attack in retaliation for the hacking of Sony Pictures — the studio behind madcap North Korea comedy “The Interview”.

Washington has said the attack on Sony was carried out by Pyongyang.

The NDC accused Obama of taking the lead in encouraging cinemas to screen “The Interview” on Christmas Day. Sony had initially cancelled its release after major US cinema chains said they would not show it, following threats by hackers aimed at cinemagoers.

“Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest,” a spokesman for the NDC’s policy department said in a statement published by the North’s official KCNA news agency.

“If the US persists in American-style arrogant, high-handed and gangster-like arbitrary practices despite (North Korea’s) repeated warnings, the US should bear in mind that its failed political affairs will face inescapable deadly blows,” the NDC spokesman said.

He accused Washington of linking the hacking of Sony to North Korea “without clear evidence” and repeated Pyongyang’s condemnation of the film, describing it as “a movie for agitating terrorism produced with high-ranking politicians of the US administration involved”.

Unlikely symbol of free speech

The film took in $ 1 million in its limited-release opening day, showing in around 300 mostly small, independent theatres. It was also released online for rental or purchase.

The film, which has been panned by critics, has become an unlikely symbol of free speech thanks to the hacker threats that nearly scuppered its release.

The low-brow comedy revolving around the fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un played to packed cinemas across the US.

A file sharing website reported the film had been illegally downloaded more than 750,000 times.

Online services for Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox gaming consoles, which had decided to release the film online, went down Thursday, apparently attacked by hackers.

Microsoft’s online network for its Xbox gaming console was restored to nearly full service Friday but the PlayStation network remained down.

The NDC spokesman called again for a joint investigation into the Sony hack, which has already been rejected by the US, while accusing Washington of “beating air after being hit hard by others”.

“In actuality, the US, a big country, started disturbing the Internet operation of major media of the DPRK (North Korea), not knowing shame like children playing a tag,” he said.

From Monday night, websites of the North’s major state media went dead for hours.

The cause of the outages in North Korea’s already limited Internet access has not been confirmed. The US has refused to say whether it was involved in the shutdown.

The North has about one million computers — mainly available at educational and state institutions — but most lack any connection to the world wide web.

All online content and email are strictly censored or monitored with access to the Internet strictly limited to a handful of top party cadres, propaganda officials and expatriates.

KCNA previously compared Obama to a black “monkey” in a zoo in May, prompting Washington to condemn the comments as “ugly and disrespectful”.

The North Korean mouthpiece also earlier this year called South Korean President Park Geun-Hye a “prostitute” in thrall to her “pimp” Obama.

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will Friday announce plans to stop the National Security Agency hoarding hundreds of millions of telephone call records, among reforms to US surveillance programs exposed by Edward Snowden.

A senior US official, speaking ahead of Obama’s speech on NSA programs, said that Obama believed trawling for telephone “metadata” was vital to fighting terrorism, but needed to be reformed to preserve civil liberties.

“In his speech, the president will say that he is ordering a transition that will end the Section 215 telephone metadata program as it currently exists,” the senior official told AFP.

The president foresees a move to a program “that preserves the capabilities we need without the government holding this bulk metadata.”

“The president believes that the 215 program addresses important capabilities that allow us to counter terrorism, but that we can and should be able to preserve those capabilities while addressing the privacy and civil liberties concerns that are raised by the government holding this metadata.”

It was not immediately clear how Obama would accomplish the reform or whether he would leave it up to Congress to decide which entity should hold the call data.

Telecommunications companies have balked at suggestions that data on the destination and duration of calls should be held within their servers and be accessed by US spies armed with court permission.

Some activists have suggested a third party company could be charged with holding the data.

Obama will also order Friday another immediate change to the system of telephone data dragnets, requiring a judicial finding before the NSA can query the database, the official said.

Obama has also asked Attorney General Eric Holder and the intelligence community to report to him by March 28 on how the program can be preserved without the government holding the metadata.

Snowden, a fugitive US contractor now exiled in Russia, has fueled months of revelations by media organizations over data mining and spying on foreign leaders by the NSA in one of the biggest security breaches in US history.

The disclosures have infuriated US allies, embarrassed Obama administration diplomats and shocked privacy campaigners and lawmakers.

The White House has assured Americans that data on phone calls and Internet use is only collected to build patterns of contacts between terror suspects — and that US spies are not listening in.

But Obama has said that one of his goals in Friday’s speech at the US Justice Department is to restore public confidence in the clandestine community.

His appearance follows a prolonged period of soul-searching and policy reviews by the White House.

On the eve of the speech, Britain’s Guardian newspaper and Channel 4 News splashed the latest revelations from Snowden.

Their reports said the NSA had collected almost 200 million mobile phone text messages a day from around the world, and used them to extract data on the location, contact networks and credit card details of mobile users.

Civil liberties activists are bracing themselves for disappointment.

Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said Thursday that Obama would likely neither outlaw nor significantly reform bulk collection of telephone and Internet metadata.

“We are looking to the president tomorrow to make a very bold statement about reclaiming privacy. We are looking to him to take leadership about reining in this programs,” she said.

“Will our government continue to spy on everyday Americans?”

Kevin Bankston, policy director of the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation, warned that if Obama did not announce specific reforms, the battle would shift to Congress.

“President Obama’s trajectory on these issues from reformer to supporter of these programs has been very dispiriting,” Bankston said.

“If he does fail to take a stand and exercise the bold leadership that is necessary, it will become Congress’s responsibility to step into the breach and we look forward to working with them to do so.”

Intelligence chiefs say the programs are perfectly legal, but their opponents say they are unconstitutional.

Obama is also expected to back extra privacy protections for foreigners swept up by the programs and limits to spying on friendly world leaders.

His challenge will be to prove that data mining programs, made possible by swift advances in technology, can enhance national security while restoring public confidence that individual freedoms are safe.

During his deliberations, Obama has had to reconcile his duties as a commander-in-chief sworn to keep Americans safe and his oath to uphold the US Constitution.

Not to mention guard his political flank — Obama knows his Republican enemies would pounce if a future terror attack could be pinned on restrictions he placed on spy agency capabilities.

The president’s speech will also be closely watched for any changes to the PRISM program, which mainly sweeps up Internet data on foreigners, based on records acquired from Internet companies like Google, Yahoo and Apple.

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WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama will unveil reforms to the country’s spying activities on January 17, his spokesman said Friday, following a review of the National Security Agency (NSA).

White House spokesman Jay Carney said that Obama’s remarks next Friday would show the “outcomes of the work that has been done on the review process.”

The White House said on Thursday that the president was nearing the end of his soul searching about US spying reforms as he met lawmakers who oversee the intelligence community.

Obama met the delegation in Washington as part of consultations with players on all sides of the debate on how best to balance US security and privacy rights, following revelations of massive spy agency snooping by fugitive contractor Edward Snowden.

The meeting included several prominent critics of NSA phone and data sweeps. Obama says revelations over the program by Snowden have undermined public confidence in the work of the US intelligence community and reforms are needed.

Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, who was one of the lawmakers in the meeting, called on the president to explain why such vast data mining programs — which spy chiefs say help piece together links between terror suspects worldwide — were necessary.

Senior US officials have indicated Obama is considering whether to permit the programs to continue while requiring data to be held either by technology companies or a third party instead of the NSA. Intelligence officers would have to obtain court permission to access the phone records.

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WASHINGTON – The White House will release a review Wednesday calling for reforms in National Security Agency spying sweeps, exposed by Edward Snowden, which have angered US allies and raised legal and privacy concerns.

President Barack Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney said the report by a review panel was being released earlier than a planned date in January due to incomplete and inaccurate media reporting about its contents.

Obama met members of the review panel earlier on Wednesday to work through the 46 recommendations in the report.

“While we had intended to release the review group’s full report in January … given the inaccurate and incomplete reports in the press about the report’s content, we felt it was important to allow people to see the full report to draw their own conclusions,” Carney said.

“For that reason, we will be doing that this afternoon — releasing the full report.”

Obama commissioned the review panel report earlier this year in the wake of explosive revelations by fugitive intelligence contractor Snowden on the stunning scope of the NSA’s operations.

He has said he wants to strike a balance between keeping Americans safe from terrorist threats and safeguarding privacy rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.

The review board comprises former White House counter-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke; Michael Morell, the ex-deputy director of the CIA; Peter Swire, an official specializing in privacy and technology issues; constitutional law professor Geoffrey Stone; and Cass Sunstein, a former regulatory official in the Obama administration.

The president has said he would try to get the shady spy agency to restrain its Internet and phone data collection operations but is expected to allow them to continue in some form.

Obama is due to consider which of the recommendations he will accept and will then make a speech to the American people in January.

The release of the report comes with intense pressure building on the administration over the programs, from political opponents, the Internet industry and even the courts.

A federal judge in Washington this week ruled that NSA programs, which have scooped up millions of details on telephone calls and Internet traffic on Americans and foreigners, were probably unconstitutional.

The ruling opened a long legal battle which is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

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• NEWS & INDUSTRY
• Privacy
• Tracking & Law Enforcement